


cuz i can't help falling in love with you

by overcomewithlongingfora_girl



Series: girls, girls, girls! [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Childhood, Childhood Friends, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, Feelings, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Sad, Sleepovers, They're Just Kids :(, canon homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:28:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26217910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overcomewithlongingfora_girl/pseuds/overcomewithlongingfora_girl
Summary: When Mai is thirteen, and Azula twelve, Ty Lee moves to town. She and her identical set of sisters stride into the Academy looking like a matched set, and Ty Lee’s wearing pink ribbons instead of regulation red, and Mai’s just. Gone.It’s a feeling like falling. It’s a feeling like her stomach dropping out. That bright grinning face and her giggly laugh and the way Mai just always feels like smiling when Ty Lee is around. It’s so completely unlike her, so new and so welcome and so spirits-damned dangerous.
Relationships: Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Series: girls, girls, girls! [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1904494
Comments: 34
Kudos: 108





	1. take my hand

**Author's Note:**

> For the Avatar wlw week prompt : post-war (adulthood) | before-war (childhood)

Mai has always been different. Quiet, disinterested, all but emotionless. Nothing surprises her and nothing moves her. The girls at the Academy have made a game of saying whatever outrageous thing they can think of, to or about her, to try to get a reaction. It never works, and then when she was eleven, ten-year-old Princess Azula came along and the girls were too afraid to say anything to her at all.

It hadn’t always been this way, but it’s starting to feel like it has. Like this blank mask is the only self that Mai has. Her memories of giggling and sticky fingers are already starting to fade, replaced by the image of the perfect little doll at family dinner who keeps her elbows off the table and only speaks when spoken to. Once, she’d thought she had a crush on Azula’s older brother. Now, she wonders absentmindedly if she feels anything at all. When any of their irritating little classmates giggle about boys, Mai sits back, looking bored, and everyone knows that that’s just Mai.

And then – and then – and then –

When Mai is thirteen, and Azula twelve, Ty Lee moves to town. She and her identical set of sisters stride into the Academy looking like a matched set, and Ty Lee’s wearing pink ribbons instead of regulation red, and Mai’s just. Gone. 

It’s a feeling like falling. It’s a feeling like her stomach dropping out. That bright grinning face and her giggly laugh and the way Mai just always feels like _smiling_ when Ty Lee is around. It’s so completely unlike her, so new and so welcome and so spirits-damned dangerous.

Everyone knows about the decency laws. Everyone knows about the girls a few years above Mai’s year who’d been caught kissing in a closet by a teacher. One of them was a noble, and she came out all right – sent to some finishing school instead of becoming an admiral, the way she’d hoped, but still all right. If the stories were true, she ended up married off to some petty general running an Earth Kingdom outpost.

Her girlfriend hadn’t been so lucky. The other girl was on a scholarship. No influential parents to pull strings for her. There were a lot of different stories about what had happened to her. Prison guard, some said. Others just said prison.

Whatever it was, Mai isn’t going to risk it. Not for herself or this strange, twirly girl that is somehow becoming the third part of Azula’s triangle. No. Mai smooths her face into indifference, the way she’s been taught all her life, and pretends that she feels nothing.

It doesn’t occur to Mai for six whole months that maybe her indifferent act is working much better than she thought.

The three of them are all sleeping in Azula’s quarters at the palace – not Mai’s favorite place to be, but the last girl who refused earned herself a handprint burned into her forearm. The teachers claimed there was no way to know who or where it had come from, but the slender, elegant fingers were all too familiar to Mai. Such a mark on her perfect pale skin wouldn’t play well to a future husband. A strong connection to the most powerful woman in the Fire Nation, on the other hand, would be a triumph. When the invitation came, written in calligraphy on creamy, thick paper, Mai saw the excitement in her mother’s eyes and didn’t even pretend she had a say in the matter.

So that weekend Mai arrives at the palace with a change of clothes in her bag. She watches her parents’ carriage pull away and then stands, staring mutely up at the foreboding structure. She doesn’t want to go in yet. Doesn’t want to navigate Azula’s cruel games and hear her grandstanding, all while pretending not to be afraid of the Fire Lord down the hall. The man had _burned_ his own son. He’d burned Zuko! Azula’s awkward, quiet older brother, who Mai had had a little baby crush on back in the day. Burned and banished like a war criminal, and he was only thirteen at the time! Even Mai’s parents, loyal to the end, had discussed the Agni Kai in hushed, shocked tones.

Mai is thirteen now. If the Fire Lord knew the traitorous thoughts crawling around in her head, what would he do to her?

She’s still staring up at the palace when Ty Lee tumbles out of another carriage beside her. She’s dressed entirely in pink, and her cheeks are flushed and she’s smiling, smiling, smiling, as always. At the sight of her, Mai’s heart flutters. She masks it with a scowl.

“Wow! The Imperial Palace! Can you believe it?”

Mai rolls her eyes. “Yes.”

Beaming, Ty Lee bounces on the balls of her feet. “Well, what are we waiting for?”

Heaving her shoulders up in a heavy shrug, Mai sighs. “Nothing, I guess.”

“Okay then! Let’s go.” On she bounds, and a cold shiver of fear runs through Mai as she watches Ty Lee bounce along, running her fingers over marble crenellations, fairly dancing along the path. What if she says something ill-advised to the Fire Lord? What if she runs right into him in one of the palace’s dark hallways? What if – what if – what if –

“Would you cut that out?”

Ty Lee glances over her shoulder, looking surprised, an expression that quickly sags into a frown. The sight of that unfamiliar gloom on the cheerful younger girl’s face makes something in Mai’s chest squeeze. She ignores it. “Just walk, okay?”

“Okay.” Ty Lee’s subdued attitude doesn’t last for long. She falls in line next to Mai, but within moments she’s humming, bouncing on her toes, head swiveling as she tries to take in every part of the palace. Just once, the knuckles of her fingers brush Mai’s. Mai snatches her hand away like Ty Lee’s touch is poison. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Ty Lee frown again, and again, she ignores the plunging in her gut.

Then, all too soon, they’re outside Azula’s chambers.

Mai knows the princess is waiting for them, but she refuses to submit to the indignity of going out to greet them. Instead she’ll wait in her room, pretending she doesn’t care that they’re here, even though Mai knows she’s been lonely since Zuko left – or as lonely as Azula ever got. She was bored, at the very least, but this making them come to her was a power play in its own right.

As Mai raises her hand to knock on the door, Ty Lee charges in, and a wave of fear nearly keeps Mai from following her. With no warning, they might catch Azula in an undignified moment. Who knows what the princess will do if they make her angry like that?

But Mai can’t let Ty Lee face Azula alone. She closes her eyes and steps into the room after the ridiculous, fearless, _reckless_ younger girl.

And nothing happens! Nothing happens at all, except that Azula glares and tosses her hair and tells Mai her perfect manners are slipping.

“You won’t catch that high-ranking husband your parents want for you.” She sniffs. “C’mon _Mai,_ that’s the only thing you’re good for, anyhow.”

Ty Lee’s head comes up. “I don’t think that’s true!”

Arguing with Azula is stunning enough. Arguing with Azula on Mai’s behalf…Mai swallows hard, not that anyone is looking at her.

“Excuse me?” Azula’s voice is sharp enough to cut.

“I think that everyone has good qualities!” Ty Lee’s voice is bright and hopeful, and Mai sees Azula relax, even as Mai herself relaxes. So it’s just the girl’s undefeatable optimism. Nothing more. Not a challenge or a declaration of loyalty.

Any declaration of loyalty that isn’t to Azula is a challenge in itself.

Azula lets it pass. And Mai lets it pass later, when Azula makes jokes about Ty Lee that are more than a little cruel. Somehow, Azula knows just how and where to strike, even though they’ve known the new girl less than a year. It makes Mai’s mouth tighten into a hard, straight line, makes her look away so she doesn’t have to see the wide-eyed, confused vulnerability on Ty Lee’s face.

It’s not all misery. It never is. That’s what’s so difficult about Azula – when she likes you, when you’re one of hers, life can be good. Better than you ever thought, like you’ve been selected for something special. Mai has always been a pretty, perfect, useless doll, but Azula sees her talent with knives, her calculating eye, her cleverness. It feels like having another self under her uncaring armor, a tough and capable self that Mai really sort of likes.

So she puts up with the taunting and the mind games and the need for control. Mai can tell that Ty Lee will too. Anything to feel special, wanted, chosen.

Late that night, though, Mai wakes to a small, warm body next to hers, someone pinching her ear to wake her up quickly and quietly. Before she can process, or blink into true awareness, or say a word, the question comes. “Do you hate me too?”

Ty Lee’s breath is warm on the shell of her ear, and the feeling of her hands on Mai’s arm all but stops Mai’s heart. She’s still half-asleep, thinks she might be dreaming. “W-what?”

“I think Azula hates me.” Ty Lee’s voice is soft and calm in the darkness, but Mai is attentive enough to hear the wobble. “Do you hate me, too?”

“Azula doesn’t hate you. She’s just…like that. With everyone.”

“Oh.” A moment passes. “And…and you?”

The tactical thing might be to lie. Or to complain about Ty Lee waking her up for this. Or just to roll over and go back to sleep. But Mai is half-awake and exhausted and weak, unexpectedly soft after hearing that razor’s edge of sorrow in Ty Lee’s voice.

“I don’t hate you. I…I’m just like this, I guess. I don’t hate you.”

“You don’t?”

“No. I, um.” Mai lets her eyes fall shut, speaks it into darkness and pretends she’s talking to only herself. “I like you.”

“Oh!” Ty Lee’s voice sounds so pleased. There’s a squirrely feeling in Mai’s stomach and a catch in her throat. She squeezes her hands around Mai’s arm and presses close to her. “I’m glad. I like you too.”

That, Mai can’t respond to. Heart in her throat, she closes her eyes and tries to sleep. She should really shake Ty Lee off before she does it, make it clear that they can’t be here cuddling on the floor of Azula’s quarters while the princess sleeps in her bed just a few feet away. She should explain all that, or, better yet, just shove Ty Lee off with no warning.

She doesn’t. She falls asleep with the comforting warmth of the younger girl pressed against her, and from the unfamiliar way her face feels the next morning, she thinks she might have fallen asleep smiling.

_

Mai likes Ty Lee. Ty Lee likes Mai. It’s a knowledge that comes slowly, but when Mai finally allows herself to think about it, it’s a knowing that’s as solid as the ground she stands on. She doesn’t bother to test it. Neither does Ty Lee. They look at each other and know.

Mai is fourteen. Ty Lee and Azula are thirteen. All Mai knows is that someday, somehow, she wants to be able to smile at Ty Lee without caring who’s watching. She wants to laugh at the grey-eyed girl’s jokes without pretending she’s annoyed. She wants to speak freely, wants to hold Ty Lee’s hand, wants to let the most unselfconscious person she knows help her rediscover the emotions she’s lost touch with and the person she used to be so long ago. She and Ty Lee are both high ranking. They wouldn’t end up in prison, like that hazy memory of a girl from years ago. They would be smart. They wouldn’t get caught. They would be…they could be…something. Spirits, what if they were something?

Mai has almost gotten up the courage to put her thoughts into words.

Azula gets to her first. Mistrustful, manipulative Azula, who corners her one day after class. They’re both taking Naval Strategies while Ty Lee has opted for yet another phys ed course, so it isn’t unusual for the two of them to be walking side by side through the hall without the third part of their trifecta. Sometimes they’ll walk quietly; sometimes Azula will monologue about one thing or another – the fashion crimes of their peers, or her ideas about defeating the Northern Water Tribe, or the latest firebending forms she’s learned.

On this day, Azula drops her bombshell immediately. Mai’s friend is a big fan of the shock factor. “So, you know it’s treason to sleep with Ty Lee.”

“W-what?” Mai’s voice comes out shocked, and she hates herself for letting the emotion slip through but her heart rate has just shot through the roof. “What are you talking about?”

What _is_ Azula talking about? They’re fourteen, just fourteen, and Mai was only daydreaming about holding Ty Lee’s hand. Azula’s viciousness makes her want to cringe into invisibility. It’s not – it’s not _that,_ it’s not _sex,_ it’s just holding hands. Smiling. The soft sweet security of liking each other. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? They can play it off as a friendly gesture, as an accident, as, as anything but what it is. That’s still innocent, isn’t it?

“I see the way you look at her. It’s disgusting, really. I mean, she’s younger than you and all. It’s a little…what’s the word? Predatory?”

Mai bites the inside of her cheek, hard. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, come on, Mai.” Azula rolls her eyes. “You’re worse than the boys in the capital.”

Mai knows which boys Azula is talking about. The ones who lean out of carriages and shout things, things that make Ty Lee blush and Mai want to scream back. The boys yell at all three of them, but the worst of what they have to say usually lands on Ty Lee.

Mai had never though of herself as anything like them, before. But Azula’s narrowed, jeering eyes cut right to a soft spot she didn’t know she had.

Outwardly, Mai gives no sign. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Good. Because I’d hate to have to turn you in to Father.”

Mai lets Azula flounce off alone. She knows it’s what the princess wants. Azula loves nothing more than a dramatic exit, and besides, Mai needs the chance to calm her racing heart. She digs her fingers into her palms and tries to breathe.

Azula would. Azula _would_ turn her in to the Fire Lord. Not for loving Ty Lee – Azula couldn’t care less about the laws. But for having loyalty to someone other than Azula herself…that, the princess can’t forgive.

_

Later that year, just once, Ty Lee tries to take her hand. They’re alone in the palace gardens, waiting for Azula to return from a lesson so they can do homework. They’re alone – they’re _alone_ – and Mai knows they’re alone. Still, she draws her hand back and shakes her head.

“No.”

“But…”

“Ty Lee, no.” Mai swallows hard at the pleading look in the other girl’s big gray eyes. “Never.”

“ _Never?”_

“Never.”

Biting her lip, Ty Lee drops her head, and Mai watches her until she finally caves with a tiny, unhappy nod. It doesn’t bring Mai any satisfaction to see it. They go back to work silently, the tension still hanging heavy and real between them.

“Mai?”

“Yeah?”

“What about when the war is over?”

Mai’s forehead wrinkles. “What?”

“This.” Now Ty Lee doesn’t give Mai a chance to pull back, she grabs her friend’s hand and holds it, firm and sure. “When the war is over?”

The war has lasted a hundred years, and it’s likely to last a hundred more. There’s the whole Earth Kingdom to conquer, and the Northern Water Tribe too. The Avatar, some say, is still out there someday, and Ozai won’t rest until every last threat is burned to ash.

So the war will never be over. That’s why Mai squeezes Ty Lee’s hand back, tight, and agrees, while they both pretend not to hear the hitch in her voice. “Yeah. Yeah, someday when the war is over.”

They don’t hold hands again for a long, long time.


	2. take my whole life, too

During her time in prison, Ty Lee has a lot of time to think. She thinks about her parents, and her sisters, and the nation she lives in. She thinks about the circus, and her skills, and the way she was raised. She thinks a lot about food – food that isn’t cooked in industrial quantities without enough seasoning. She thinks a lot about Azula. And she thinks a lot about Mai.

Her two best friends. Her two best friends in the world. Both of them cunning and driven and capable. Both of them dangerous and secretive and distant. One of them on the verge of becoming a world leader. The other sitting in prison somewhere all too far away.

The Kyoshi warriors have plenty to say about Ty Lee’s friends. Azula’s insane and Mai’s a robot. Azula’s a sadist and Mai is too. Azula’s worse than Ozai, and Mai is little more than a pawn. Ty Lee might be on fragile footing in their little group, given her past conflict with them, but she’s too stubborn and too loyal not to speak up every time.

Azula’s not evil. She isn’t. That’s too easy. She’s _mean,_ yes. She uses fear and whatever secrets she can glean to control people. She’s ruthless and relentless and utterly obedient to her father. She even takes some vicious pleasure in humiliating people or hurting them sometimes, just to prove she can, just to prove that she’s in charge.

But she isn’t a sadist. She isn’t a robot. She _isn’t_ worse than Ozai.

But okay, yeah, she might be a little bit insane.

 _Mai,_ though? Ty Lee won’t hear a bad word about Mai. It becomes almost a joke among the warriors, how quickly and completely Ty Lee will come to her defense. Mai defied one of the most dangerous firebenders in the nation to save the Avatar in his friends. To save Zuko because she knew it was the right thing to do. Because she didn’t want to see him hurt. Because she cared for him and she was tired of letting Azula hurt the people she cares about.

The Kyoshi warriors laugh at her passion until one of them finds her in the prison bathroom sobbing. Ty Lee is clinging to the industrial sink and shaking and crying like she hasn’t in years, _years,_ not since she was a kid that didn’t know about positivity and chakras and wearing pink to brighten your aura.

The girl that finds her is named Merah, and when she sees Ty Lee there gasping for breath her face softens. She throws an arm around the smaller girl’s shoulders, helps her dab cold water on her eyes to help with the swelling.

“I have a girl like that,” she says, casually, quietly, meeting Ty Lee’s gray eyes in the mirror. “Back home.”

The words are an invitation, an open offer for a conversation about it, but even free-spirited Ty Lee is too well-trained. Her lips thin into a line and she drops her gaze. “It’s not like that.”

“It’s not?”

“It can’t be. In the Fire Nation.”

“Oh.” Merah’s face twists in a frown. “I’m…I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Ty Lee has restored her face to normalcy as best she can, and now she smiles with false brightness at her own reflection in the mirror. “It’s not like that, anyway.”

“Right.” Merah’s looking at her in the mirror. “You know, if the Avatar wins, maybe they could get someone new on the throne. Someone outside that awful family.”

“Zuko isn’t awful. And Iroh isn’t either.”

“Well, maybe one of them, then. When the war is over, maybe things will change.”

Ty Lee smiles humorlessly. “Yeah. When the war is over.”

_

She wonders where Mai is. What she’s doing. If the prison uniforms are just as drab where she’s being kept. What Mai looks like in those uniforms. Ty Lee’s only ever seen her in the nicest robes money can buy. The coarse, dull-dyed cotton would be strange. Ty Lee fingers her own hem and pretends she’s tugging at Mai’s sleeve.

_

The look on Mai’s face when she stopped those guards. When she defied Azula. That expression when she knew there was no going back and the fierce freedom of her decision made her growl into the wind with a feral sort of happiness. It was enough to take Ty Lee’s breath away, seeing her like that, in open rebellion against everything she’d be taught and told and held to.

And so Ty Lee plunged headlong after her. And the only thing better than that free expression on her face was the look on her face when Ty Lee saved her. So stunned she faltered, so stunned her hands dropped to her sides, so stunned she didn’t bother to pretend she wasn’t feeling what she was feeling.

There had been Azula too. Azula looking furious and savage and almost unhinged. It hadn’t been a conscious decision. Ty Lee hadn’t _wanted_ to betray Azula. Not when Azula was so powerful and so paranoid and so close to the edge. But it had been Azula’s blue flame against Mai’s knives, and as good as Mai was, she couldn’t stop fire.

And Ty Lee couldn’t let her die. It became as simple as that. Under all the questions of loyalty and love and fear and what they keep hidden, that’s all it was in the end. Ty Lee couldn’t, couldn’t, _couldn’t_ let Mai die.

_

It’s a few weeks before they’re free. A few weeks of rumors spreading, and excitement, and the prison guards being extra hard on whisperers because they didn’t know what was going on either. There were new officials deployed to the prisons. They couldn’t get rid of all the guards, the angry, violent ones who were too used to power, but they weren’t allowed to take their rage out on the prisoners anymore, and if they did, they landed themselves in a prison just like their victims. For a bunch of stubborn, rebellious teenage girls trained as fighters, this is a more than welcome change.

As prisoners start to be released, Ty Lee starts thinking new thoughts. Like, where will she go? Who will she go with? Where does she want to be, and who does she want to go with, and who does she even want to _be,_ anymore?

The circus was a little girl’s dream. After the things she’s seen, Ty Lee can’t go back to pretending the world is all sunshine and rainbows. More to the point, she doesn’t want to. She wants to do something that matters with the talent she has. And she thinks the girls she’s spent the past few weeks getting close to could help her do that.

When she starts sidling up to Merah’s side and murmuring questions, the warrior doesn’t seem surprised in the slightest. She explains about tradition and ritual and honoring the past, the way they train and the reason they do it. It’s about being a shield, at the end of it all. It’s all about protecting those who need protecting.

_

Ty Lee tells the warriors she wants to wear their robes, and none of them are surprised. It’s a noble purpose, after all. Ty Lee’s athletic and talented and, they know from a prison riot or two, more than happy to take on anyone she needs to.

“She’s Fire Nation,” one of the girls points out. “The Kyoshi warriors have always been Earth Kingdom girls.” Her tone is academic, but her eyes when she looks at Ty Lee are icy.

“That’s true,” Merah allows. “It’ll be Suki’s decision at the end of it. But until then, we decide by committee.”

There are fourteen girls in prison with Ty Lee. She considers three of them good friends, would say she’s friendly with at least eight. There are three that distrust her and another two that seem to absolutely hate her. You should never go into battle fighting alongside someone you hate. The girls murmur and converse among themselves and Ty Lee watches with bated breath.

The warriors hold the vote after half an hour of conversation. Six girls vote yes. Four girls vote no. Four more abstain.

“It’s supposed to be a unanimous vote,” one of the girls points out, and Ty Lee’s heart sinks.

“Yeah,” Merah allows. “And it’s supposed to happen on Kyoshi Island after she completes the full training course. We’re in _prison._ I don’t think I need to remind you of that. She’s in prison too, for defying the same girl that we fought.”

“Yeah, after she helped the Fire Princess throw us in here.”

“Yeah. Because she was raised to fight in a war that we ignored all our lives.”

More than a few girls duck their heads at that one.

“Look, Ty Lee’s talented and she’s smart and she gets along well with most everyone. If she weren’t from the Fire Nation, would you want her?”

The same girl juts her chin out. “Yes. But she is from the Fire Nation.”

“She’s in the same prison we are, Kori.” Merah shakes her head. “Just give her a chance.”

“Fine.” Kori rolls her eyes. “Fine! But if it blows up in our faces…”

“It’s not like she can do much damage from here, anyway,” Merah points out, more than fairly. “And it looks like we’ll be in here for a while.”

Kori sighs. “At least until the war is over.”

 _Until the war is over._ Ty Lee swallows. Once upon a time that was a pipe dream, a fantasy, something to stave off the aching in her heart when she looked at her best friend. Now she’s in prison and her entire world has shrunk to that idea, that light at the end of the tunnel, that possibility that always felt like little more than an idle fantasy. What is it now? A real thing? A real future?

She thinks about the boy Avatar and tells herself to hope.

It’s never been harder and it’s never been easier to do.

_

When Mai sees Ty Lee again, she’s shocked. Ty Lee can tell – it’s almost imperceptible, but there’s that slight widening of Mai’s eyes that betrays her surprise on seeing her friend decked out in Earth Kingdom green. It brings a smile to Ty Lee’s face; seeing Mai, and knowing her well enough to recognize her emotions, and surprising her, and _seeing Mai!_

Unable to resist the urge a moment longer, Ty Lee lunges forward to throw her arms around Mai, and holds on tight, and doesn’t let go.

Mai is still. Ty Lee doesn’t stop squeezing her. She can’t stop squeezing her. It’s been too long that she thought about it, and now Mai is finally _here,_ finally right here in her arms. She wonders if Mai was always this skinny. She wonders if they starved Mai in prison, and if she has bruises under her robes, and if Mai has ever wanted to take a trip to the Earth Kingdom, specifically Kyoshi Island?

Slowly, shakily, Ty Lee feels Mai’s arms come up to wrap around her shoulders, and it feels so right and warm and tight that Ty Lee feels a few unexpected tears smear her white face makeup. “Mai!” She whispers it into Mai’s ear, “Mai, Mai, _Mai!”_

“Ty Lee.” Mai’s voice is hoarse and strained and Ty Lee _feels_ the emotion in it. The raw relief takes her breath away.

They stand like that for a long time, too long, in Ozai’s Fire Nation, but in Zuko’s Fire Nation, Ty Lee knows the rules won’t be the same. She knows it from the lack of tension in his face, the determined set of his jaw, the way he smiles shyly at that _cute_ Water Tribe Warrior boy. So she keeps holding on, and stands on her tiptoes to murmur her next words into Mai’s ear.

“Guess what, Mai? Guess what?”

Mai pulls back a little to look at Ty Lee’s face, to actually smile. It’s Ty Lee’s favorite expression on her, and she can’t resist reaching up to brush a loose strand of hair behind Mai’s ear. The tenderness of the gesture makes Mai’s breath hitch audibly.

“What?”

Ty Lee brings her hands up to Mai’s head, gently tips Mai’s face towards hers. She kisses her gently, sweetly, exactly the kiss she’s been waiting years for.

“The war is over.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not part of Avatar WLW week technically, but I couldn't leave them in a sad place I just couldn't.

**Author's Note:**

> For Avatar wlw week! I wrote this and then it made me sad so I'm doing a second chapter to give these lovely ladies the happy ending they deserve. Lmk what you think, either here or on tumblr at overcomewithlongingfora-girl !


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